Salnys looked at his map, he had been walking for a bit and was getting pretty winded. He looked through his map and found an alley on his map which was only a building away. He headed down the alley, happy that he had found a shortcut. Until he felt like he was being watched.
Salnys starts to feel extremely uneasy and begins to cast a basic shield spell and manages to finish casting his shield, but he’s too slow. A person drops from seemingly out of nowhere and tries to strike him with their dagger, they manage to put a pretty nasty-looking cut on his arm, causing Salnys to dispel his shield in shock. He knows better than to fight someone with weapons with his experience and responds by turning tail, running, and screaming like a madman. The person in all black tries to throw a dagger and manages to scrape another one of his arms. Though his screams are answered.
“What’s happening?” Salnys recognizes the voice as Cecillian’s, his voice is powerful and carries through the alleyway.
“INTRUDER!” Salnys screams, still sprinting at full speed, though he doesn’t hear the person chasing behind him now that Cecillian has turned the corner.
Without question, he draws an object from his hip, and it makes a bright flash accompanied by a loud sound, and he hears the intruder make a noise for the first time, though it is just a grunt of pain. Salnys decides to risk stopping and turning around as he’s made it to the end of the alleyway. Immediately after turning around, he sees a stain of blood on the wall following the intruder who’s currently scaling the wall.
“Damnit,” He hears Cecillian behind him, clearly upset, “I can’t let him get away.”
However, by the time he had finished his sentence, the man had scaled the wall. Salnys looked around to make sure he was safe, and that there's nothing else around. After clearing his surroundings Salnys notices that his arms hurt a lot, both of them have one long cut, and immediately after actually seeing the wounds, he's pretty sure it started hurting a lot more.
"Damn," Salnys is gritting his teeth now, trying not to scream in pain, "this hurts a lot, is there anything that you can do?"
“Sorry, the most I can do is this,” Cecillian responds, pulling out some cloth bandages and wrapping up the cuts on his arms, “You should get to the infirmary, it’s right down this road. I have to get to security and report this at once, so I won’t be able to escort you, stay safe.”
Before Salnys could respond Cecillian was already sprinting down the road. Cecillian was right though, he should get his arms checked out.
********************
“Your arms should be back in tip-top shape within the next week, may have been a bit sooner if whoever wrapped the bandage applied more pressure when applying this,” The probably around 50-ish woman smiled, “You're lucky these wounds didn’t go any deeper than they did or else you would be in much worse shape and wouldn't have been healed in time for classes,” She thought for a moment and continued by saying, “What made these wounds anyways? The wounds looked like they came from a dagger, which is awfully concerning considering you’re on campus.”
Salnys responds by saying, “Someone jumped me in an alley a few buildings down, I ran, they hit me a couple of times, and then Mr. Hailnate saved me and went to report the incident to security.”
Her face turns more serious than it was before, and she checks up on his wound again with some different tools, she was much more diligent this time.
“Ma’am, what are you checking for now?” Salnys asked, fairly concerned.
“I’m making sure there isn’t any poison or foreign magic in your system,” She continues with her work, checking back over some areas she had already gone over, “I usually wouldn’t check for things like this, but considering the situation, it’s a genuine concern.”
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Salnys found the potential of this concerning, but he didn’t feel sick in any way, so he was confident he would be fine. She was still using various instruments and using different kinds of spells on him, he didn’t recognize any of them, but he was only a second-year student, so he probably shouldn’t know those spells regardless.
“Alright, I haven’t found any poison in your system, but the magic in your body is a little messed up,” She says, still casting some spells, “It may be because of a failed spell, did anything like that happen during the encounter?”
“Yeah,” Salnys responds, “I tried casting a spell to shield myself, but they cut my arm and it dispelled it.”
She responds, “That makes things a bit worse, but you should still be fully recovered within the next week. If anything happens, tell me.”
Salnys responds to this by nodding and walks out of the building. He’s immediately intercepted by Cecillian, who looks him up and down, presumably to make sure he’s fine. He has two security members trailing behind him, they look a little strange, one of them was a tall orc wearing chainmail armor with black linen under it, and gives off a righteous vibe, like a paladin. He has grey skin and a magnificent beard with some streaks of grey starting to creep into it, and he has a hilt strapped to his waist.
The other is an... elf?! Although the other guy is an orc, they’re not very uncommon around these parts, but elves are rare to see around here, especially in a place like an academy, and as a security guard nonetheless. This means that he sticks out from the group. He looks like he’s in his late teens, though that would mean that he's decades older than Salnys; his is face full of youthful exuberance. He holds a handsome face with light freckling, is wearing fine clothing, leather armor with various patterns of dark blue, dots speckled upon it like stars in the night sky, and he has a lute strapped to his back. He has component pouches strapped to his waist with little baubles and trinkets hanging from them, they jingle as he walks, he also has a strange-looking component pouch on his belt, and he has a kite shield in perfect condition being held by some immaculately crafted gloves, they almost look as if they could be his hand. He is clearly proud of his first impression. These two guards are clearly not from around here.
“You’re fine, right?” Cecillian inquires.
“Yeah, the nurse said there’s no poison in my system, but that my magic has been... messed up? She said it was because of a failed spell during the encounter.” Salnys says, sounding concerned.
“That happens if your flow of magic is disrupted,” Cecillian responds helpfully, “someone at your level would have to keep a constant focus on their spells to make sure they don’t unravel and dispel too much mana.”
“Happens to me if I’m in a rush when casting spells,” The elf piped up, “usually just causes a lot of noise though, sounds like you got it pretty bad.”
“I really don’t get how you still do that.” The paladin piped up “You should really... I mean, you’ve been trying your best lately, I can tell. Take a rest if you ever need to.”
“Oh, that’s uncharacteristically nice of you,” The elf responds, “Thank you for that.”
“Oh yeah, no problem.” The paladin says, his eye twitching a little when he does. He begins staring at the elf, and he responds by doing the same, it looks as if they’re having a staring contest.
Salnys decides he should get going, he was getting hungry anyway, and the sun was starting to get low in the sky. Though he was still curious about something.
“I am wondering though, whatever happened to the person who jumped me back in the alley?“ Salnys asked, curious about the whereabouts of his unknown assailant.
“The situation’s being taken care of,” The paladin responds, breaking eye contact with the elf to turn to him, “just don’t worry about it.”
“If you say so. I’m going to get something to eat from the academy store and head back to my dorm, hope you all have a great evening.” He waved the group goodbye and turned to walk away.
The elf stopped him and leaned in to tell him something, it looked like it was important, so he stopped, “Just a suggestion, get the garlic bread, it’s really good.”
********************
Salnys’s sitting on the bed in his dorm, munching on the warm garlic bread he’d bought, staring out the window. He was watching the sunset reflecting on the messy day that he’d had, he’s especially upset about his arm injuries as he was going to have issues casting spells later, but the nurse ensured that he’d be fine in time for school. While he was having his doubts about Cecillian having dealt with the person in all black, he should be fine. He’s going to focus more on preparing for school and making sure he won’t be overwhelmed by his classes. He should also talk to some of his classmates and get acquainted with his homeroom classmates. He finishes up his loaf of garlic bread and lays down, he’s had enough excitement today, and he needs some sleep. He starts thinking to himself, that despite this extremely rough start, and the queasy feeling he had all over his body right now, he felt like this school year was going to be a good one, he just had a feeling. With these final thoughts, he drifts to sleep.